Janette Rallison's Blog, page 42

Truth in advertising, why writers are needed

This morning when I got the strawberries out of the fridge, I noticed that the package said they were “limited edition”.  I hate to disagree with packaging, but how can strawberries be limited editions?   Does this mean I should expect strawberries to disappear from the grocery store shelves soon? The earth made them for a few millennia, but it will be discontinuing them?
Or did the package mean that those particular strawberries won’t be around long? Eat them now before they mold.  If so, doesn’t that go without saying?
It made me think about all the other inaccurate packaging that products use.  For example:
Good and Plenty


Good yes, but only plenty if you have no children. If you have children, they will descend on you as soon as they hear the sound of the box opening and you will end up with only three pieces of candy. Perhaps they should have gone with Good and Adequate If You Don’t Have a Sweet Tooth.
Life cereal .
Who came up with this product name and why?  I’m guessing it’s probably because we all wish our life was like Lucky Charms—full of rainbow marshmallows that are magically delicious—but instead life is actually more like crumbly little squares that aren’t nearly as sweet as we’d like.  It's life, baby, get used to it.
Hershey’s Kisses
Unfortunately, these kisses are a little too waxy tasting. It makes me wonder who Hershey was kissing. If someone is going to be kissing my lips, I want it to be Lindt. Almond Roca would be acceptable too.
Thin Mints
These have yet to make me thin, although I keep trying.  (You can see this blog has swerved into thoughts on chocolate and will probably not leave. Chocolate. Mmmm.)
Snickers
I love the candy bar but it makes you wonder what other names were tossed out in the marketing meeting before they decided on this one:  Scorns? Scoffs? Disdainful Deriding? General Mockery?
What is this candy bar really trying to say, and does it have anything to do with what people think of your rear end after you eat too many?
Almond Joys
Okay, this packaging has it right.  I’m pretty sure this is what joy actually tastes like.
Suddenly, I have an overwhelming urge to eat chocolate. But anyway, this is just one more example of how writers are clearly needed in the world.
Write on, folks.

So you've written your book--now what?

One of my most common emails (that I get, not that I send--just clarifying) is from people who have completed their novel and they want to know what to do next.

My first response is: rewrite it.

I don't tell people that because I don't want to discourage them. They'll get plenty of discouragement from agents/editors/publishers. Besides, for all I know said optimistic writer has already rewritten the thing 17 times.

I usually tell people about agentquery.com It's a great resource for authors. You can search agents by genre and the site gives you all sorts of useful information like the agent's submission guidelines and what sort of chocolate to send in order to bribe them. Okay, the website doesn't really tell you about agents' favorite chocolate, but it should. If I was an agent, that's the first thing I'd have listed there.

Anyway, here is the checklist I should give people before they submit anything.

1) Have you read any books on writing? If the answer is no, you're not ready to submit. If the answer is yes, but you've only read one or two, you're also probably not ready to submit. Writing is like playing the piano. Most people who are self-taught are not going to be all that good at it.

Here are some great writing books for novelists:

Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King
Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain
Scene & Structure by Jack Bickham (Actually anything by Jack Bickham)
GMC Goal, Motivation, and Conflict by Deborah Dixon (You need to go to the publisher's website for this one.)
Anything by Gary Provost
Character and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card

If you write non-fiction or picture books, get and read the books that pertain to those genres. Ditto for romance books, westerns, whatever. Blogs on writing are also very helpful. For example, if you need to write an action scene involving angry grapefruit, you'll want to read my last blog.

2) How many times have you gone over the manuscript yourself?

If the answer is twice, you're not ready to submit. For first time novels, you need to send that baby out to lots of readers for critiques. Don't just send it to your mom or friends. They'll tell you that it's great--and they might even believe it. After all, they love you. You need to have a network of fellow writers or well-read friends that can give you tough love. If you don't have that, pay for it. Revising is the difference between selling and not selling.

3) How long have you let the manuscript sit, unread?

If it's only a few days or a couple of weeks, you're not ready to submit. One of the truly weird things about writing is that you can't see your own mistakes when you write them. This goes for missing words but it also applies to unclear dialogue, bad description, etc. The story works beautifully in our minds, and so that's what we see on the paper. Let your manuscript sit for a month. Two or three months is better. (Which is why it's great to send a manuscript to an editor and then not get the revision letter for a couple of months. By that time you can look at it with fresh eyes.)


4) Have you ever gone to a writers' workshop or conference?

If not, why not? If you want to publish you probably should go to a conference that addresses your genre. You'll meet people who know about the industry. You'll get advice from pros, and you'll get tips about what's selling and what's not. If paranormal is a hard sell (which it is right now, by the way) and you're pitching your paranormal romance, you may run into problems. Not knowing why something is rejected is one of the most frustrating things about this business. Stay up to date about what's going on.

Besides, a good writers' conference will energize you. That's why people go back year after year.

5) Have you bought all my books?

Actually, this step might not really help you, but it would help me so I'm including it.

Happy submitting!

What I'm doing now

You'd think that after writing twenty plus novels it wouldn't be hard anymore. Maybe it wouldn't be if I kept writing the same novel over and over again. (Hey it worked for Barbara Cartland . . .) But unfortunately I keep writing different novels and the one I'm working on right now is an action novel. Yep, action.

Action, I've decided, is hard for me to write. I mean it's such a visual thing in a non visual medium. Plus, I've never really cared about fight scenes or car chases. Give me witty banter or romantic smoldering looks any day.

I was trying to make my daughter help me with a good guy-bad guy fight scene for the Erasing Time sequel and needed something to stand in for my people, so I grabbed a marker and some grapefruit that were on the counter.

Yes, This is what I've resorted to:


I'm pretty sure Ian Fleming didn't use this method. Sigh. And in case you're wondering, the pineapple is just an innocent bystander.

And the winners are . . .

Random.org has chosen the following people. (Because it's always too hard for me to choose.)

Erin Edwards
Kami
Enna Isilee
Linda Kish
Hall Family
Jennie
Gayle
Kelly C
Leigh Seeley
Rachel A
Merry
Allerednic
Kari Pike
Krystal Larsen
Tamera Westhoff
Rosalyn

Send me your physical address and I'll send you My Fair Godmother.

However, I won't be near a post office until Monday so it will take a while for me to get you your books.

Thanks guys!

The bribery continues

First off, let me say that I really thought I was through bribing blog readers to do random things. I mean, I never intended this blog to be like those What-would-you-do-for-a-Klondike-bar commercials. Although it isn't readily apparent, I have more class than that . . . at least some of the time.

But this time what I'm asking you to do will be really easy. Two seconds of your time.

My engaged daughter called me yesterday to tell me she was chosen as one of the five finalists for a wedding give-away and asked me to ask my friends to vote for her and the son-in-law-apparent. (You know you want to see his picture anyway)

Sooo in a shameless attempt to buy votes I'll be giving away paperbacks of My Fair Godmother (because I have a ton of them) Vote. Leave a comment telling me you did. And I'll give-away a copy of MFG for every four comments I get. In other words, if I have 20 commenters, I'll give away 5 copies of the book. Your chances are good--so take 2 seconds and vote for Asenath and Alex--number 4 at this link:

https://inspiredgiveaway.wufoo.com/forms/q7x3a1/

And the winner is DebZ

send me your physical address at jrallisonfans at yahoo dot com and I'll send you your book.

My Unfair Godmother giveaway

To celebrate the release of My Unfair Godmother in paperback (Did I mention it was up for a Whitney Award?) I'm going to do a giveaway. Anyone who likes fractured fairy tales, romance, adventure, or distracted fairy godmothers will love this book.

So here's how you enter: Leave a review of any of my books (good or bad, I don't care) at either Amazon or barnesandnoble.com then leave me a comment telling me which book you reviewed. (A link would be lovely, but isn't required.) You'll be entered one time for each book you review. And I've got something like, um, it's really bad when the author doesn't know--but it's about a dozen books out there.

I'll be doing giveaways on both my JanetteRallison.com blog and my

http://www.cjhillbooks.blogspot.com/blog and you can comment in both places.

And here's the book description of My Unfair Godmother so you'll really, really want it.

Tansy Miller didn't mean to end up on the wrong side of the law—being caught with a can of spray paint, on a date, wasn't exactly planned. Enter Chrysanthemum "Chrissy" Everstar, Tansy's fair godmother, who still has a few things to learn about granting wishes. When Tansy is transported to the Middle Ages to recreate the Rumpelstiltskin tale, Tansy will need the help of her family, her wits, and especially the cute police chief 's son, Hudson, to stop the gold-spinning story from spinning wildly out of control.

11 Ways not to start your novel

I'm about to read a lot of first pages from hopeful authors. I've done countless critiques over the years, and so I both look forward to and dread this job.

Opening up the pages of a book is a bit like opening up the front door for a blind date--except that it requires no effort on your part . . . such as doing your hair, or sucking in your stomach so you look thinner, or whatever else you do on your blind dates. (Really, it's none of my business, and I don't want to know.)

The point is, you're hoping for something good and you're often disappointed. In the gentle-hearted spirit that I am well known for (Oh, all right, Sarah Eden still refers to me as Attila the Hun because of a certain edit I did for her)I'm going to offer fellow writers a few tips.

Here are a few ways not to start your novel.

1)With your character waking up.

I wake up at least once a day. You could say I am a veteran at waking up. I never like it when I do it, and I probably won't like it when your character does it either. Give me something more exciting.

2)With your character running away from someone or something.

One would think that this would nicely take care of my first objection, and it would--if I hadn't already seen it about a hundred times. A good chase scene is nice, but not at the beginning of a book because A) I don't know enough about your character to care if they get away and B)I'm pretty certain your main character won't be killed off in the opening scene as that would make for a very short novel. So it isn't really a high tension opening anyway.

3)With huge chunks of back-story.

Yeah, I know, Charles Dickens gave us character life sketches right off, but styles change and this sort of thing doesn't work now. We also don't wear top hats anymore. Go figure.

4) With action that is so confusing I don't know what the heck is going on.

Sometimes an opening starts with people being bombed, or someone being attacked, or just people sitting around talking about other people. Whatever it is, it has to make sense. I'm already doing the brain-intensive job of transforming printed words into a lush and vivid landscape in my mind. Make it easy for me. This isn't the place to be obscure or mysterious.

5)With so many characters I can't keep them straight.

It's always better to start with a limited amount of characters until the reader has time to get people straight. Openings with a lot of characters feels like one of those parties where you meet fifteen people at once and you know that no matter how hard you try you won't be able to remember any of their names tomorrow.

6) With a mean character.

Hey, if I'm going to step into a character's skin and be that person for hours or days, I don't want to be someone I don't like. Ditto for stupid characters. And while you're at it, please make me pretty too.

7) With a run on sentence.

This is akin to getting your first glimpse of your blind date and noticing his shirt is dirty. If he didn't take the time to fix that, the rest of him is probably not going to be much better.

8) With a statement that doesn't have anything to do with anything else.

For example, if you start your first chapter with the sentence: Betty's ghost was not the forgiving type. (Which, by the way, is a great first line. I should use it sometime.)You should let us know about the ghost and why it's holding grudges fairly quickly. Don't go on and on describing Veronica and her trip to the mall. Your reader will be gritting her teeth and thinking, "Who's Betty? Did Veronica kill her? What is her part in all of this? Is this author trying to irritate me?"

Probably not, but the result is the same anyway.

9) With a bland sentence.

I have enough bland sentences in my life already. They're sort of like dust and they settle on everything. If the first sentence isn't good, what are the chances I'm going to find captivating ones later on?

10) With a flashback.

If you need to flashback in the first scene, you probably haven't started your book in the right place. Plus, editors and agents tend to hate flashbacks. Many of them were bitten by flashbacks at some point in life, so you really can't blame them for this prejudice.

11) With the phrase,"The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit." (Apologies to Scott Westerfeld) Okay, it's original, but I have a large supply of cats, and now any time one of them throws up, I think, "Um no . . . I don't think I've ever actually seen the sky that color . . . I wonder what Scott's cats have been eating?"

You just don't want to do that to your reader.

Writing for Charity Conference on Sat in Provo

You are cordially invited to attend this year's WRITING FOR CHARITY conference at the Historic Provo Library!

What is Writing for Charity?

In 2008, Author Shannon Hale held a professional writing conference at the Salt Lake City Library in hopes of raising money for those in need. She invited other local authors to come and lend their support. The event was a success, and WRITING FOR CHARITY was born!

On March 17th, 2012, the ROCK CANYON writers of Utah and the CHILDREN'S LITERATURE ASSOCIATION OF UTAH are hosting the fourth annual WRITING FOR CHARITY event at the Historic Provo Library. Yes, it's on St. Patrick's Day, and we hope you'll consider yourself lucky to attend!

How this conference is different:

LIVE Manuscript Critiques from Published Authors ON SITE!

Have you ever wanted to sit with a published author and discuss your manuscript-in-progress? This year, group manuscript critique sessions will not be a free-for-all discussion with conference participants, followed by a short remark from the professional author. Instead, the author will give the critique, and the participants in the group will listen. You'll have the full attention of the author (or several) and will also learn by listening to the critiques on the other manuscripts in your group. If you don't bring a manuscript or aren't a writer, you can spend that time asking the author questions on any writing or literacy topic of your choice.

NO Stuffy Lectures! INTERACTIVE Workshops!

These breakout sessions will break the mold. We're nicknaming this year's event "NOT YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S WRITING CONFERENCE" and we intend to make things fresh, innovative, and interesting.

LUNCH PROVIDED!

Enjoy lunch on site. (Full day registration only, and only guaranteed for people who pre-reigster.) More details to follow.
All this, and your money benefits underprivileged children! WE INVITE YOU to look around the site, read about this year's selected charity, and spread the word. It's going to be a lot more fun than chasing a leprechaun. And that's a promise.

For more info

http://writingforcharity.blogspot.com/

The winner is Liz

Liz send me your address at jrallisonfans at yahoo dot com and I'll pass it along to Donna's blog tour manager.